Professional Piece July 14

     Sure, I wrote when I was in middle school, but my writing mainly consisted of the papers
assigned by my Language Arts teacher, of whom I associate with two of my most horrifying
memories: her jiggling underarms and, even more traumatic, the bleeding red papers she
handed back to me regularly.  Back then, I scribbled an occational note to my girlfriend, but for
communication purposes, I relied mostly on verbal interaction.  In some ways, the students I
teach aren’t much different than those of my generation.  The students of today still talk to each
other, most likely even more than I ever did because of the popularity of cell phones, they still
pass notes, and they still cringe in the face of traditional writing instruction.  Unlike in my case,
though though, my students communicate with text every day, thanks to technology.  They text,
Twitter, compose with multimedia, and use their social networks to post messages and chat with
friends.  The text they create can be sent at the speed of light and be read by an audience of
the world.  I would have loved that in middle school.  
Technology has made writing both cool and commonplace, and I have every intention of
integrating it into my writing instruction, which I should note looks very differet from that of my
own middle school experience.  In short, I teach writing through workshop, and  like most
teachers, I have taken ideas from those in the field such as Nancie Atwell, Donald Graves, and
Jim Burke, and modified them to meet my own style and needs of my students.  My apporoach
to conducting writing workshop changes continuously as I learn and reflect, but it is based on a
solid pedagogical foundation.
Writing is a process, involving both individual exploration and collaborative interaction.
My students each keep a daybook, in which they expore their curiousities and passions.  They
choose topics of interest to them and explore different approaches and styles.  They develop
writing pieces and take them through various steps of the writing process in an order dependent
upon their indivudla needs.  This process they don’t carry out alone, either.  Along the way, the
share with others, listen to feedback from their peers and teacher, then go back to thier writing
and revise it with thier new understanding.  And sometimes, when they get it just right, they
publish their work and can share it to an eager audience of their peers.  The process is messy,
but writing by nature is recursive, and giving students the freedom and support to work through
it is one of the most powerful parts of my class instruction.   Through our workshop, students
learn about themselves and one another; they grow as writers and thinkers, and as no piece is
developed in isolation, build relationships with classmates that forge a writing community.  It’s
awesome.
    Writing, though, is changing.  As I have already mentioned, students are writing for new
purposes and in new environments.  If I am going to continue to have my class be meaningful
for my students and ensure that they get the most out of thier writing experience, I need to revist
my apporoch to teaching it.  Internet applications provide a number of ways for writers to
engage in writing in new and exciting ways, and much information exsists that addresses
moving physical writing into the digital world.  Troy Hicks, author of The Ditigal Writing
Workshop, for example, explains how the entire workshop approach could be moved online.
Hicks does an excellent job of guiding teachers through making such a transformation, and I will
be discussing his work here, but his approach is not a comprehensive explanation of the newly
defined role of the writing teacher.
     I do not question the merit of moving coposition to a digital environment.  Many internet tools
fit in quite nicely.  They allow for composition and collaboration in ways that are not possible in
person, and others serve to redefine a writers’ understanding of audience.  Disconnecting the
digital world from the writing process would be a detriment for students.  But so would the
removal of human contact, for it too has its unique advantages.  In person, feedback is
immediate, body language can be used, and comments are personal, giving all writing
interactions a closer personal connection.  A connection that off of which not only writing can be
built, but also relationships and social skills; areas that are still important.    
    21st century skills go well beyond digital compentency.  To posess true 21st century skills,
one must be able to navigate seemlessly between the digital and the physical.  As a teacher, I
would be doing my students a diservice if I did not provide my students meaningful experiences
in both.  My revised vision of writing instruction, therefore, is one of ballance. One determined
by my own knowlege of best practices in teaching writing, understanding of the needs of my
students, and knowlege of tools existing both in the physical and digital world to support it.  

Working Outline

I. Introduction
    A. Digital Writing today
    B. The teaching of writing/the workshop approach
    C. My quest to find ballance
II. The workshop model/ best pracices of teaching writing
III.  21st century learning
    a. The needs of the 21st century learner
    b. strengths an limitations to digital writing
IV. The blending of both worlds--my approach
    A. Daybooks
    B. Digital Composing
        -blogging
        -google docs
        -wikis
    C. Digitial Collaboration
        -google docs
        -wikis
        -RSS feeds of blogs
    D. Teacher and Student conversation/conferences
        -writing groups
            -read alouds   
            -revision conferences
        -teacher conferences
    E. publication
        -to the web
            Youth Voices
            Blogging apps.